Hamas on Sunday said it is suspending hostage negotiations because of Israel’s handling of the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza, a Palestinian official briefed on the hostage talks has told Reuters. Israel’s three major TV news channels, without citing named sources, had reported there was some progress toward a deal, which would involve 50 to 100 women, children and elderly being released in stages during a three- to five-day pause in fighting.
The World Health Organization has managed to get in touch with healthcare workers at Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital where thousands of Palestinians, including those who are critically injured, are sheltering as the Israeli military encircles the hospital. In a statement on Sunday, the WHO chief, Tedros Ghebreyesus, called the situation “dire and perilous”.
Regional directors of Unicef, UN Population Fund and the World Health Organization are calling for “immediate action to halt attacks on healthcare in Gaza”. They added: “Attacks on medical facilities and civilians are unacceptable and are a violation of international humanitarian and human rights law and conventions … The right to seek medical assistance, especially in times of crisis, should never be denied.”
State-run Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) has signed a $1.2bn deal to supply air defense systems to Israel’s military, the company said on Sunday, citing the country’s war in Gaza, Reuters reports. “IAI finds itself in an accelerated mode to supply systems and solutions for Israel’s defense establishment, for all theaters of operation, whether sea, ground, air or space,” IAI said, noting the deal was with the defense ministry.
The US national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, said the US does not believe Israel intends to re-occupy Gaza after its ongoing war with Hamas. “This is not our understanding of the Israel government’s position,” said Sullivan, his words in apparent contrast to the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, who separately told CNN, “The first thing we … will do … [is] destroy Hamas. The second thing we have to understand is that there has to be an overriding and overreaching Israeli military envelope.”
An Israel military spokesperson, Lt Col Richard Hecht, said plans to try to evacuate babies from the al-Shifa hospital in Gaza were still being “developed”. On Saturday Israeli military spokesperson Rear Adm Daniel Hagari said “We will provide the assistance needed” to remove the babies from the hospital.
The Palestine Red Crescent Society announced Sunday that the al-Quds hospital in the Gaza Strip is “out of service and no longer operational”. It states that “the cessation of services is due to the depletion of available fuel and power outage”.
The health authority in Gaza has said it is unable to issue updated casualty statistics in the Gaza Strip “due to the targeting of hospitals”.
Egyptian security sources told Reuters that on Sunday at least seven injured Palestinians arrived on Egyptian soil through the Rafah border crossing, and that 32 Egyptians crossed over, alongside 80 foreign nationals and dependents. Russians and Poles were among those said to have crossed. Egyptian security sources also told the news agency that at least 80 aid trucks had moved from Egypt into Gaza by Sunday afternoon.
The head of Lebanon’s Hezbollah party said its armed wing had used new types of weapons and struck new targets in Israel, and pledged that the front against its sworn enemy would remain active. In a televised address, only his second speech since the conflict between Israel and Hamas began in October, Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said Hezbollah had shown “a quantitative improvement in the number of operations, the size and the number of targets, as well as an increase in the type of weapons”.
The Israeli defence minister, Yoav Gallant, warned Hezbollah not to escalate fighting along the boundary. “Hezbollah is dragging Lebanon into a war that might happen,” Gallant told troops in a video aired by Israeli television channels.
